How good are these forecasts?
Every forecast scored on seasons the model never saw while its settings were chosen.
Every leg, leg stage and in-port race goes into one Plackett–Luce model. A place is read from the points each boat scored (high points: the fleet size for a win, one less a place; 2014-15 scored the place itself). Boats level on points, and those that scored nothing, are ranked behind the others with no order among them.
Teams carry across editions where the sailing programme did, through their sponsors' names: Ian Walker's (Green Dragon, Abu Dhabi), Bouwe Bekking's (Telefónica Blue, Brunel, Sailing Poland), Chris Nicholson's, Simeon Tienpont's Dutch team (AkzoNobel, Team Childhood I, Team JAJO), the Spanish programme (Telefónica, MAPFRE), 11th Hour Racing (from Team Alvimedica), Paul Meilhat's (Biotherm, United by the Ocean) and Team Malizia. Each edition has its own boat term, so a new boat class (VO70, VO65, IMOCA) starts every team's boat afresh.
The VO65 fleet of 2021 and 2023 raced alongside the IMOCAs but never against them: those races are in the ratings, but the standings and the title odds are the IMOCA fleet's.
Wind and water current matter where the fleet races in sight of land: the in-port and coastal races take the wind (light air and very strong breeze both make a race more of a lottery) and the current at the port. An ocean leg crosses too many weather systems for one place's wind to say anything, so legs take none. Both weights are tuned and kept in the model.
The 2027 odds sail the race leg by leg: the fleet size for a leg win, one less a place, with the two long legs (Alicante to Auckland, Auckland to Itajaí) also scoring a gate on the way, as 2023's Southern Ocean leg did. The in-port races are the tie-break, so they score nothing.
Thin data: an edition is ten to twenty races between six to eight boats, a few years apart, and the boats change class. The ratings say more about which programmes sail well than about one crew's form.
2008-09 has only each race's first three (its leg points include the scoring gates); 2011-12 to 2025 have full orders; the 2026 Atlantic was one leg. The Ocean Race Europe was sailed in 2021 and 2025 (there was no 2023 edition). Bonus points, penalties and redress are left out of the ratings (a boat given redress points didn't finish in that place).
The 2027 entry list isn't published: until it is, the fleet is the Atlantic 2026 fleet. The 2027 scoring (which legs score twice) follows the 2023 format and is an assumption until the notice of race is out; in-port dates are approximate within the published stopovers.
Water current (Open-Meteo's marine model) starts in 2022, so only the 2023 and 2025 in-port races have it.